caloso

Oh, and the answer to the titular question? It's too far when as soon as you get home, you have to turn around and ride back to work. Now that's too far.

coney

I have a mere 5 miles to bike to work, then 5 miles home. It's city riding, so I get stuck in red lights, and have to watch for umpteen thousand car doors all the time. I wish my commute was farther, I'm beginning to feel like it's not far enough. (so now I'm doing a lap around Central Park on the way home. I feel great!)

25 miles is a long haul. I agree with many others here, do it a couple times a week, but not every day. Tuesdays, thursdays, maybe. or Mondays and Thursdays... til you get used to it, then work up to 3 or 4 days.

Agreed, after a long, crappy day at work, will you want to haul that 25 miles?

super-douper

It's not my normal commute, but a few times after a long/crappy day at work, I've taken a 30 mile route home. Seems to clear my head and turn a bad day into a good day.

I'm sure it's different though since I have the option of taking the short route. Also, sometimes I get stuck at work, and I always prefer not to ride in the dark, so I'd constantly be worried about leaving on time.

stumpelcenter

I have a 13 mile ride from work to home when I commute. And a 2 mile ride in. I live 13 miles from work.

Huh. Where are the other 11 miles into work you might ask. ON A BUS. Works great for me. Only once in a year was there no room for my bike on a bus bike rack. Check out the public bus transportation to see if you could go that route.

Oldwarhorse

my commute is 25 miles each way. I try to do it twice a week for 100 miles/week. Definitely go e-bike (pedal assist). I don't need a shower when I get to work and I can tailor my speed to how I feel and how much battery power I have left. I usually try harder on the way home which is slightly uphill and I don't care if I get sweaty. E-bikes are revolutionary.

I retrofitted my own old mtn bike, put some 700c wheels on it and some more comfort features--I'm flying in to work and can get there in about 75 minutes. If I get the stoplights green and I have a lot of strength I can improve on that but I don't mind the time.

jade408

Can you break it up a bit in case you don't have time or energy? Take transit for 10+ miles and bring your bike aboard?

cooker

I'm confused. You said your work is 25 miles away, but the cities are 11 miles apart. Do you live and work on the far side of both?

KD5NRH

Maybe they've gotten closer together in the last 12 years.

cooker

Yeah I googled and it is more like 20+ miles so the 11 was a typo or referred to the highway part.

For me, it would be too far except for maybe once a week, or ride there one day, leave the bike overnight and ride home the next, and grab car rides in between.

GreenmanBelg

What about an electric bike?


Over here in socialist Europe well in Belgium if your commute is over 15kms you get an electric bike provided by the company via the state, you have to do more than 50% per year to qualify. The icing on the cake is you get 25 cents per km tax free in your pocket.


So if your commute was 25 miles = 40 kms , cycling 5 days a week you'd get €400 extra tax free per month.


Anyway just a thought even though you're in the US.

rolandk

I take the bus most of the way to work and bike the last 5 miles, and then bike all the way home 17 miles with 1000ft climbing twice a week. Any more than that is just too time consuming.

youthcom

Nice plan. The only downside your limited speeds for ebikes. I just got one that assists me up to 28mph (45kph) & I can do about 21-22 mph avg on a 16 mile one way commute accounting for lights & stop signs gets me to work in under 50m. With a little more effort on the non ebike I can do this in an hour,

Shimagnolo

I once worked with a guy who was doing a 25 mile commute.
He said in the first 6 weeks he lost all his excess body fat.

noglider 

I ride to work two days a week, 14 miles each way. I've lost a lot of weight. I didn't even know it was possible, since I was fairly thin to start.

rumrunn6

that sounds ideal

deapee

I think 25 miles is at the top end of what people would consider commuting by bicycle daily for sure. It's a big ride. On a flat ride, I feel like just about anyone could go from the couch to making that in 1-1.5 hours. But averaging 22'ish mph for two to three hours a day is a lot of riding and that's pushing pretty heavy even if it is flat. I think your best bet is to allow 2 hours for the commute either way. I think most people could probably push 15 mph all day as long as they were hydrated and kept fuel coming into their system.

ptempel

Your commute route sounds nicer than mine. I do a similar distance about 24 miles each way from home. I think you could do it in 1:30 each way assuming 16mph or so is not too fast and will let you leave a little in the tank for the ride home. That's about the speed I do it but I also have a fair amount of lights with a little bit of climbing. So you could go faster if you have less lights or the bike path is not too crowded. One recommendation is to be realistic and only try it once or twice a week initially if going from home. Then you could park and ride the other days from Sacremento if you find a nice shorter 11 mile route (using back roads only). That's basically what I do but my full ride is from Bloomfield, NJ to NYC. Park and ride for me is Lenonia, NJ to NYC which is about 10 miles each way. After you get comfortable with the commute, then you can increase to three times a week from home weather permitting. That's about the most I've done so far in a week. It adds up to 190 miles a week which has been plenty for me. Finally, I don't ride on the weekend an leave it for the family. So I use the weekend as recovery. If I don't feel good on Monday, then I'll usually take an "easy week." For me thats just doing park and ride for the week.

PDKL45

My commute is 35 kms each way, so a couple of miles less than your planned distance. I do it 2-3 times per week unless it's raining torrentially or way below freezing.

I am riding tomorrow and Friday this week (in a dry break of a few days in the monsoon here in Korea) and I have been happy all day because of the weather.

Long commutes are great: you don't need to buy gym membership or pay for therapy.

KD5NRH

Yeah; when I had a gym membership, I'd go 3-4 days a week, spend 15-20 minutes on a treadmill, (old knee injury limits my running) 20-30 on upper body and 30 on a stationary bike. Now I spend 25 minutes on a non-stationary bike twice a day, plus whatever other time I feel like. (Usually a leisurely 5-7 miles through the park averaging 8-10mph just to enjoy the sights. Sometimes a ~3 mile speed run at a couple of the hills I used to just walk up.) Best part; it doesn't cost $40/mo. Worst part; it keeps costing more in maintenance and upgrades.

ItsJustMe

I currently ride 15 miles one way to work. By late September we're going to be moving to a new location that is 26 miles from home. I plan to try but I don't really know if I'll be able to keep it up.

Some parts of the route are pretty sketchy. One 1-mile-long stretch is extremely dicey - it would have been a stopper but they just built a greenway along it. That road has claimed 3 bicyclist's lives in the last 3 years. I'm a bit concerned that the greenway will be slippery when wet (part of it is a boardwalk over swampland) and may not be plowed in the winter.

azgreg

If I ride the whole way to work it's 17.5 miles each way. However, I mostly split the ride ride with the light rail. It's 5.5 miles to the rail station and another 2.5 miles from the other station to work.

deapee

Not many people realized this thread was 12 years old......

azgreg

Is it against forum rules to revive an old thread?

deapee

I have no idea...I would assume that if it were that anything over a certain age would be automatically locked or archived. I didn't revive this thread, just hopped in it and was confused with the date until I started reading. I responded myself yesterday and didn't notice until today.

azgreg

Gotcha. I know what you're saying. I frequent other forums that frown on resurrecting older threads. I wasn't sure if BF had the same policy.